From what I understand you have a USB stick that DOES boot OK on the unRAID hardware?  If you do not resolve the current boot issue then maybe the easiest thing is to email limetech describing the issue and giving them the GUID for your current USB stick, and the one that does boot OK and might replace it so they can re-issue your license for the new one?

 

That would at least keep the stress level down

 

Another deep breath time....  If you are still having problems, describe exactly what you see happening after you push the power button on the PC.

 

Do you see the unRAID boot menu?  (Not the PC boot menu where you can select the boot drive but the one which where you can select memtest, safe start before the unRAID boot manager automatically starts to load unRAID.)

 

Do you see the progress bars as the two unRAID files are read from the flash drive?

 

Next thing that happens is that Linux and unRAID are installed.  You should lists of Hardware installs, packages installed and service initialized.  If everything completes properly, you should have a login prompt.

 

Do you have a login prompt? 

 

If not, take a picture of the monitor screen and attach it to a message.

Agree -- pictures of the boot screen would be helpful.    It sounds like the USB flash drive is fine ... otherwise it wouldn't be able to boot MemTest when configured as a MemTest bootable device.

 

So either you haven't "prepped" it correctly for UnRAID; or the UnRAID computer isn't booting to the USB flash drive.    The latter is sometimes "tricky" to get set right -- some flash drives are shown independently;  some are listed as a "hard drive" and you need to have the boot menu set to boot to hard drive first; and ALSO set the "hard drive boot order" so the flash drive is #1 on that list.

 

But rather than conjecture about what may be happening, a picture (or two) of the PC's initial boot screen would be helpful.

I dunno perhaps I'm not explaining  my problem well. Anyway I know how to make a bootable Unraid USB stick and I also pretty much what it should look like when its running.

 

My Unraid server suddenly took a disliking to it's USB drive.

 

 

As kindly instructed by garycase in order to upgrade I used unRAIDServer-5.0.5-i386 and would have done a clean install but when I tried I got this

 

 

But when I try the same USB drive in my main PC, it works fine.

 

 

Does that make sense?

 

To make things even stranger when I used my Lexar 16GB USB drive instead with unRAIDServer-5.0.5-i386, It works on both PCs, unfortunately that's not the one I registered years ago

 

Also at one point last night my back-up of 4.7 also wasn't working & at that point I almost threw the whole thing out the window but for some reason it is magically OK now, so calm has returned.

The "Boot error" screen is an indication that the system is trying to boot from another device -- not from the flash drive.

 

The reason you're getting different results with your 16GB unit is (as I noted earlier) different flash drives are often enumerated differently => one may be "seen" as a hard drive; the other as a USB device.    You need to look carefully in the BIOS to ensure the system boots from the flash drive.

 

Post a picture of the BIOS boot order selection page -- and also of the "hard drive order" choices (which are generally a DIFFERENT menu than the boot order screen).

 

The "Boot error" screen is an indication that the system is trying to boot from another device -- not from the flash drive.

 

Can't be as I mentioned earlier not only did I check it in the BIOS but on my motherboard you press F8 you get a list of devices and you select the one you want to boot from and that's what I've been doing.

 

I'll try and post pics later.

If you have the flash reconfigured so it boots fine to v4.7, then try this:

 

Plug the flash into your PC.  Do NOT redo the "MakeBootable", and do NOT replace SysLinux or LdLinux.      Be sure you save your key file;  then delete everything else except SysLinux and LdLinux.    Now copy everything EXCEPT those from a v5 distribution to the flash drive.

 

Then try to boot with that flash drive.

 

I HAVE seen a few systems that won't boot with the newest version of SysLinux ... perhaps you have one like that.

 

Tried it and got this. 

 

 

Anyway I'm back to work tomorrow so no more time for this at the moment & I think I'll just have to accept that everything seems to work but just not together. Anyway thanks for your help chaps.

Tried it and got this. 

 

 

Anyway I'm back to work tomorrow so no more time for this at the moment & I think I'll just have to accept that everything seems to work but just not together. Anyway thanks for your help chaps.

 

Take a look at this thread:

 

    http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=25265.msg219625#msg219625

 

 

Based on reply #29, this is a BIOS issue. The flash will boot the main PC but not the unRAID server.

Based on reply #29, this is a BIOS issue. The flash will boot the main PC but not the unRAID server.

 

Not sure who you are replying you here.  However the fact that there is SYSLINUX message on his monitor indicates that a boot process is starting.  LINUXSYS is a boot manager for LINUX and is used (as I understand it) to allow selection of any number of boot options.  I would presume that it is the unRAID flash drive is the source of this LINUX boot start.  I also seem to recall that Tom changed the version of SYSLINUX somewhere in the version 5 development process which changed the file locations of the supporting files that displayed the boot options.

 

I further recall that some people had issues with mixed versions of SYSLINUX, the supporting files (and their location)  which required rerunning makeboot.bat to redone after all of the correct files (in their proper location) were loaded/reloaded onto the unRAID flash drive.  The problem usually came up when people copied only a few of the SYSLINUX support files from the upgrade package.  If this is the case the OP will have to go through the upgrade procedure very carefully to make sure that he has all of the proper files in their proper location and rerun makeboot.bat.

Agree with Frank.  I've seen a couple of flash drives that had this issue -- booted fine as they were configured with v4.7; but when re-done with the newer syslinux and makebootable they wouldn't boot on a specific system anymore.  It's been over a year since I last saw that, and I don't recall exactly how I got it working again ... but I believe I went back to the v4.7 distribution and used that "Makebootable" to get the flash booting;  then just did an upgrade of the key files for v5 (without reformatting or adding the newer syslinux).

 

 

Thanks for all your help chaps. I decided to pick up a new motherboard as I saw an Abit AB9 Pro for sale and it was very cheap and has 9 SATA ports. Anyway this Motherboard doesn't have any issues with my USB stick and the Parity synch is in progress.

 

Only issue now is how do I get access to my files as Windows says I don't have permission but I'm sure that's a relatively simple solution.

...

Only issue now is how do I get access to my files as Windows says I don't have permission but I'm sure that's a relatively simple solution.

Have you run the New Permissions Utility?

 

Also, root user does not have network access to shares in unRAID 5 and above.

...

Only issue now is how do I get access to my files as Windows says I don't have permission but I'm sure that's a relatively simple solution.

Have you run the New Permissions Utility?

 

Also, root user does not have network access to shares in unRAID 5 and above.

 

I read about the user issue but no I haven't done either yet, do I need to wait for Parity sync to complete before doing that?

 

Plus what about the shares, can I copy over my old flash\config\shares to the USB stick?

unRAID will define your shares with default settings if you don't set them. Yes, you can copy them from your old setup.

 

I would probably just wait until you have good parity to do anything else. Shouldn't matter, but with the trouble you've had!

All up and running now. Takes time but the whole thing went pretty smoothly with the new motherboard.

 

Thanks again.